PITTSBURG — Police Chief Brian Addington ordered his staff in 2014 to hide internal misconduct reports involving two officers who had a history of beating suspects with flashlights despite court orders from the Contra Costa Public Defender’s Office and judges to share them, according to a wrongful termination claim filed by a former high-ranking Pittsburg police officer.

That refusal could lead to perjury or obstruction of justice charges, said attorney Dan Horowitz, who represents former police Lt. Wade Derby. The 28-year veteran filed a $100 million, 32-page claim on March 21 alleging almost three decades of police corruption in the East Contra Costa city. The allegations include cops shooting up anabolic steroids, sleeping with prostitutes, fudging crime stats and beating suspects.

Derby, 50, who now works for a law enforcement agency in Sacramento, said in the claim he spent his career holding fellow officers accountable and paid the price, getting ostracized until he was pushed to retire in January.

Derby said in the claim one of the final straws in his Pittsburg tenure came when he told the chief face-to-face and in memos that suppressing documents in the officer-conduct probes was “fraud.”

“Chief Addington instructed his staff to NOT disclose this material and to misrepresent the state of the file to the court,” Derby alleged in his claim. “Criminal cases went forward with the evidence of the gross criminality of the officers covered up.”

Derby declined to comment for this story.

Derby’s claim alleges that the misconduct reports should have been turned over in response to Pitchess motions by the county Public Defender’s Office in criminal cases that were investigated by Pittsburg police. Such motions are common legal requests for officer misconduct lodged by defense attorneys in criminal cases, and police departments frequently share such misconduct documentation with judges who determine whether the material is applicable to the specific trial.

The Pittsburg city manager, a lawyer who is contracted as the city attorney, the records chief and Addington all declined to comment on the specific allegations, citing “anticipated litigation.”

“All of our internal affairs investigations are conducted in accordance with the Police Officer Bill of Rights and established protocol,” Addington said in an email. “We understand the important role of a Pitchess motion during a criminal proceeding, and we follow all legal requirements. We work in concert with our City Attorney’s Office to ensure that every Pitchess motion we receive is handled properly.”

Horowitz said a representative with the Pittsburg City Attorney’s Office “wrongly advised that these materials could be withheld.”

The hidden reports stem from beating cases in 2014, Horowitz said. Fellow officers turned in two colleagues after they were seen beating minority suspects with their flashlights, Horowitz said. The pair even discussed the beatings through messages found on the department’s internal message system, mentioning how they were going to have a “flashlight party,” Horowitz said.

The department launched an internal affairs probe and parallel criminal investigation, even formalizing the process by issuing a criminal case number, according to the claim. However, Derby alleged that Chief Addington made an agreement with the officers to resign and “all will be forgotten.”

Despite leaving the department under a cloud, the two officers were witnesses for cases they investigated while on duty. Derby learned the Public Defender’s Office had filed Pitchess motions for records involving those officers as early as May 2014, according to the claim. On March 3, 2015, Derby sent a memo, obtained by this newspaper, to Addington in which he expressed concern that the department failed to disclose material facts involving the two officers in two motions.

“I am very concerned because I do not want to have this come back on our organization or me that something improper took place here,” Derby wrote.

On Sept., 15, 2015, Derby wrote another memo to Addington volunteering to take the documents to a judge, following a Pitchess motion in a murder case that one of the officers helped investigate.

“If we do not disclose this information, we will likely compromise or have a criminal conviction on a domestic violence homicide case overturned,” Derby wrote, adding the department was opening itself to civil liability and “possible criminal culpability.”

Finally, on Oct. 16, Derby took the initiative and went with the records chief and a city attorney representative to turn over discovery for one of the officers, court records show. The officer exercised his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions in the trial to avoid self incrimination, according to court records.

Why hide the records?

“It protects the department’s reputation and shields the department from civil liability in lawsuits,” Horowitz said. “It saves the department a lot of money.”